by L. J. Smith
Slipping between the temporary partitions, Elena cut through the Spider Room, where she had to push her way through dangling rubber spiders. She found Meredith and Bonnie again, and followed as they hurried back toward the entrance, ready to lead customers through the house. Outside the entrance to the fun house, she finally identified Matt, who had taken the head of his own werewolf costume off. Everyone in place, she thought, and glanced automatically toward the Torture Chamber.
The last of the seniors were getting in position. The doors were about to open. “Bonnie,” Elena said softly, coming up next to her.
Bonnie jumped a little. “Elena,” she said. She looked curiously at Elena’s costume. “I thought you were going to wear that Renaissance dress your aunt had made for you.”
“No, I lent that to someone else,” Elena told her. “Bonnie, can you do me a favor? Damon’s going to come here, dressed as the Grim Reaper. Be nice to him, okay? Don’t let on that you recognize him if you can help it, and steer him toward the Torture Chamber. I’ll take it from there.”
Bonnie paled, but she nodded. “I’ll try,” she said, and lowered her voice to a whisper. “What if he tries to bite me, Elena?”
Elena slipped an arm around her friend’s shoulders. “I don’t think he will, at least not here,” she said comfortingly. “You’ve got your bracelet and Mrs. Flowers’s sachet, so he can’t Influence you, and I don’t think he’ll try anything with this many people around. If he does, just scream as loudly as you can.”
Bonnie didn’t seem terribly comforted, but she nodded again and squared her shoulders. For a moment, she looked to Elena like a young soldier heading into battle. Frightened, but firmly determined to face down death if necessary. Suddenly filled with affection, Elena hugged her friend tightly. “It’ll be all right,” she breathed in Bonnie’s ear. “I promise.” Something twisted inside her, and she hoped, fervently, that she would be able to keep the promise.
A voice sounded through the warehouse. “Okay, they’re about to let in the line. Cut the lights, Ed!” Gloom fell, and, with an audible click, somebody started the recorded sounds of groans and maniacal laughter, so that they resounded through the Haunted House. Letting go of Bonnie, Elena headed for her own chosen spot as the doors opened to let in the crowd.
It took a long time for Damon to appear. From her hiding place behind a particularly gruesome-looking plastic apparatus and agonized dummy in the Torture Room, Elena listened to the shrieks of kids going through the Haunted House and itched with impatience and anxiety.
Stefan paced from one side of the room to the other and hesitated in the doorway, listening carefully. The red light that illuminated the room turned his skin a ghastly shade. Things were coming to a crisis, Elena could see that. Stefan’s jaw was set, and he was kneading the bridge of his nose between his finger and thumb. He was worried that Damon might be feeding on humans while he and Elena waited in the wrong place. Finally, he straightened, making up his mind, and stepped toward the entrance once more.
Just then, a hooded figure came through the door, black robes sweeping around him. The Grim Reaper regarded Stefan silently for a moment, scythe clutched in front of him, and then he swept back his hood.
“Hello, little brother,” Damon said, showing his teeth in what looked more like a snarl than a smile.
Stefan looked at him gravely. “I’ve been waiting for you, Damon,” he said.
Damon cocked a cynical eyebrow. “Saint Stefan,” he said mockingly. “Does the lovely Elena want you to make peace? Stop me from making a new family?” He moved closer, resting a hand lightly on Stefan’s shoulder, and Elena saw Stefan flinch. Stefan was, she realized, afraid.
When he spoke, though, his voice was steady. “It’s been a long time since I thought talking to you would do any good, Damon. If you want family, I’m here. All I can do is try to stop you from doing your worst, from doing something you’ll regret.”
Damon’s smile widened. “You stop me, baby brother? All you do is ruin everything, without even trying to.” He pulled Stefan closer, his hand clamping down on Stefan’s shoulder like a vise.
Moving so fast that Elena had no time to react, not even to gasp, he spun Stefan around and slammed him into the wall, sinking his teeth deep into Stefan’s throat. Stefan gave a small choked moan of pain, and Elena flinched. Damon hadn’t taken care, hadn’t bothered to soothe Stefan the way he would have a human. He wanted to this to hurt.
A terrible ripping noise came from the grappling brothers—Damon’s teeth tearing something in Stefan’s throat—and Elena clenched her fists. This was a stupid plan, she realized. Damon’s angry enough to kill Stefan.
Just as she began to step forward out of her hiding place, a new voice, cool and arrogant, rang out.
“Stop it.” Katherine, her head held high and her mouth thin and angry, was suddenly beside them. Damon lifted his head, his mouth dripping with blood from his brother’s throat, and they both stared at her.
She was wearing the Renaissance dress Aunt Judith had made for Elena’s Halloween costume, and she looked lovely, as delicate and ornate as an expensive doll, just the way she must have looked five hundred years before. The red lighting changed the ice blue of the dress to a pale violet and threw pink shadows on Katherine’s pale face and golden hair.
Elena had thought that Stefan and Damon might mistake Katherine for Elena, just for a second, but it was clear that neither of them had the least doubt about who she was.
“Katherine,” Stefan said. His face was full of mixed emotions. Shock, disbelief, dawning joy, and relief. Fear. “But that’s impossible. It can’t be. You’re dead. …”
Katherine laughed, a brittle, desperately unhappy laugh. “I wanted you to believe that. Your little human toy, the one who looks so much like me, she figured it out, but you never did.”
“Elena?” Damon asked, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.
Katherine circled them, head held high. Her long skirts swept the floor with a quiet susurration, and Damon turned slowly, so that he was always facing her, tense and wary. “Your Elena convinced me to tell you the truth.”
“Tell us then,” Stefan said steadily.
“I wanted us all to be happy,” Katherine said, looking back and forth between Stefan and Damon. Under the red lights, tears glistened on her cheeks. “I loved you. But it wasn’t good enough for you. I wanted you to love each other, but you wouldn’t. I thought if I died, you would love each other.”
Elena had heard Katherine’s story before. She let the words wash over her and concentrated on Stefan and Damon’s faces as Katherine unfolded her tale: how she had another talisman against the sun made and given her maid her ring. How the maid had burned fat in the fireplace and filled Katherine’s best dress with it, left it in the sun along with Katherine’s note telling Stefan and Damon she couldn’t bear to be the cause of strife between them. That she hoped that, once she was gone, they would come together.
Katherine’s face was paler than ever, her eyes huge, tears running down her cheeks. The story had taken her back, and it was in the hurt, puzzled voice of the young girl she had been that she exclaimed, “You didn’t listen, and you ran and got swords. You killed each other. Why? You made your deaths my fault.”
Stefan’s face was wet with tears, too, and he was as caught up in the memory as she was. “It was my fault, Katherine, not yours. I attacked first,” he said in a choked voice. “You don’t know how sorry I’ve been, how many times I’ve prayed to take it all back. I murdered my own brother. …”
Damon was watching him intently, his eyes dark and opaque. Elena couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Surely this was what he needed? To know their centuries of enmity had been pointless, that his brother regretted striking that blow and dooming them both?
Stefan turned to him. “Please, Damon,” Stefan said, his voice cracking. “I’m sorry. What we’ve fought about for so long, hated each other over”—he gestured to Katherine—“none of it was real.”
Trembling, Stefan reached a hand toward his brother, and something snapped shut in Damon’s expression. He stepped away as quickly as a cat.
“Well, it’s lovely to know that you’ve survived,” he said, turning to Katherine. His voice sharpened. “But don’t flatter yourself that I’ve spent the last five hundred years pining over you. It’s not about you anymore, Katherine. It hasn’t been, not for a long time.”
As he spoke, his eyes fixed on the spot where Elena was hiding. He’s known I’m here all along, she realized. She stepped out from behind the dummy. “Please, Damon,” she began.
But Damon’s face was a mask of fury. “You think this changes anything, Elena? I’m not going to forgive you so you can live happily ever after with my whining weakling of a baby brother. The world is nothing but suffering, and the fact that one girl lived when we thought she was dead doesn’t make any difference. This doesn’t change my plans.”
Moving too quickly for their eyes to follow, Damon was gone.
“He’s beautiful,” Katherine said, “but he’s always had that rage inside him. When he was human, I thought it was romantic.”
“We have to stop him,” Elena said to Stefan. “In this mood, he’ll kill anyone who gets in his way.”
“You promised me I would save them,” Katherine said. Her face began to crumble with disappointment. “You said I’d be a hero.”
There was a glimmer of violence in Katherine’s eyes. Elena remembered the white tiger Katherine could become, the cruelty of the Katherine she’d met the first time she’d gone through this. Elena’s lips parted. She had to say something to defuse the situation.
“I want what you wanted for us, Katherine,” Stefan cut in. His face was more open than Elena had seen it in this time. “You sacrificed everything for us, and I won’t forget that. But we have to find Damon before it’s too late. Before your sacrifice was for nothing.”
In a moment of sympathy and understanding, Katherine approached Stefan. Elena saw in Katherine what she’d been feeling for the past few weeks—loss of true love. Katherine pressed her lips to Stefan’s cheek, as gently as a human would. And then in the blink of an eye, Katherine was gone.
“Come on,” Elena said, gripping Stefan by the hand and pulling him out the door of the Torture Chamber. “We have to find him.”
A giggling group of girls pushed past them into the Torture Chamber, and Elena hesitated in the passageway, looking both ways. The Haunted House was teeming with people. Which way would Damon have gone?
Stefan pushed her gently toward her left. “You go that way,” he said grimly. “I’ll work my way back toward the entrance. There are only so many places he could be.”
“Check on the Druid Room first,” Elena said. They needed to make sure he wasn’t anywhere near Mr. Tanner. “We’ll find him, Stefan.”
Of course, we don’t know what we’ll be able to do if we find him, a nagging voice remarked in the back of Elena’s mind. Still, she headed through the maze of rooms, her eyes raking the shadows, looking for the Grim Reaper. There were a lot of people in black-robed costumes, but none of them were Damon.
An engine revved behind her, and Elena was shoved sideways by a shrieking group as a chainsaw-wielding masked man chased them down the hall. She took a turn between two partitions and found herself suddenly alone.
“On your way to Grandma’s, Little Red?” someone whispered throatily behind her.
Elena turned to see a werewolf, its mask’s muzzle dripping with gruesomely realistic blood. “Matt?” she asked uncertainly.
“Didn’t they tell you to stay on the path?” The werewolf’s voice got a little louder as he leered at her.
Tyler, Elena realized with disappointment. “Have you seen Matt?” she asked, her voice flat.
“There’s more than one wolf in these woods, Little Red,” Tyler told her, laying a large, hairy paw on her shoulder.
Elena shrugged it off. “Look, Tyler, I really need to find Matt. Or Meredith,” she added. If she knew where they were, maybe she could hide them from Damon.
Tyler scowled. “No, I don’t know where they are.” He leaned against her, his breath hot on her neck. “Come play with me instead, pretty girl. I’ll show you the way to Grandma’s house.”
“If you see them—or Caroline or Bonnie—tell them I’m looking for them, okay?”
He huffed a sigh. “Whatever.” Two girls Elena didn’t know turned the corner into the other end of the hall, and Tyler lost interest in Elena. “Full moon, ladies,” he shouted, walking toward them, and tipped his head back in a throaty howl as they giggled.
Elena passed through the Spider Room next, but there was no one there but a bunch of rowdy junior-high boys, batting the rubber spiders at each other. The Living Dead Room was teeming with people, one of whom, moaning, “Braaaaains,” pretended to take a bite out of Elena’s face. But there was no black-clad Meredith in a witch costume, no werewolf Matt, no Egyptian Caroline.
Dread settled in the pit of Elena’s stomach. Could Damon have trapped them all in the fated Druid Room? Could Stefan be outnumbered? Bonnie ought to be there too, playing a priestess sacrificing Mr. Tanner. At least she knew where Bonnie was supposed to be.
I told her it was going to be all right, Elena remembered. Half running, she headed for the Druid Room.
Bonnie wasn’t there. There was no one poised above the altar, although Elena could hear shrieks and laughter coming from not far away. Strobe lights flashed, giving the whole room a dizzying, dreamlike quality. Beneath the cardboard Stonehenge, Mr. Tanner was stretched out across the sacrificial stone altar, his robes heavily stained with blood, his eyes blankly staring up at the ceiling. Beside him lay the ritual knife in a pool of blood.
The chill in Elena’s center hardened into a frightened little ball. She rushed toward him, trying to see if Mr. Tanner was breathing. His eyes were rolled back in his head, showing little more than the whites.
She bent over the still figure, working up the nerve to touch him. “Mr. Tanner?” she said softly. Too late, too late, the little voice in the back of her head mourned. If Damon had managed to kill Mr. Tanner, then Elena was dead, Damon was dead, Stefan was dead.
Elena extended a shaking hand, her heart hammering, to touch Mr. Tanner’s neck, to feel for a pulse.
Just before her hand made contact, Mr. Tanner sat up. “AAAAARRRGGGGGHHHH!” he shrieked into her face.
Elena screamed, a thin, high sound of shock and backpedaled away from him, banging her hip hard against the wall. Stiffly, Mr. Tanner lay back down in the same position, his eyes rolling back into his head again. A small, pleased smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
Pressing a hand against her chest, Elena tried to calm her wildly pounding heart. She took a deep breath as it started to sink in: Mr. Tanner was still alive. She hadn’t failed. She could still save herself, save them all.
Elena rushed from room to room, looking for the others. She was panting, but she couldn’t stop to catch her breath. She had to stop Damon before it was too late.
“Elena.” Outside the Mad Slasher Room, Stefan came toward her, his dark clothes and hair blending into the shadows of the hall, only his pale face and white shirtfront standing out clearly. Elena stopped, eager for news. “I found Meredith,” he said. “She’s up at the front with a lot of other people, taking money.”
“She should be safe there,” Elena said. “As long as she doesn’t head out alone.” Meredith was in charge of the whole Haunted House; she could be called into the more isolated recesses of the warehouse at any moment.
Stefan glanced away, a touch of color rising in his cheeks. “I, er, Influenced her to stick with the group instead of wandering off by herself.”
“Good thinking,” Elena said. “Now we just need to find everyone else.”
The Mad Slasher Room was packed and full of noise. A boy with a chainsaw was enthusiastically revving it, chasing screaming victims around the room. Fake blood was grotesquely sprayed ac
ross the walls, and less noisy maniacs strangled and hacked at anyone who came close. Elena jumped and shuddered as the laughing, shrieking victims shoved past her.
They were playing at blood and death, and Damon could be anywhere, watching, ready to tear them apart. She felt sick as she tried to make out individual faces and costumes in the crowd.
There was no Grim Reaper, no Egyptian priestess, no werewolf, no Druid.
In contrast, the Alien Encounter Room was quiet when they passed through. Bright beams of light flashed on and off overhead, while a girl stretched out on a table below was poked and prodded by gray alien-looking figures. The girl glanced up and winked at Elena, and Elena realized it was Sue Carson.
No one Elena and Stefan were looking for.
Caroline should have been in the Deaths from History Room, playing with a rubber snake, but she wasn’t.
Turning to leave, Elena caught sight of red curls peeking out from under the black hood of a rather short executioner wielding a plastic axe over Anne Boleyn’s head. Grabbing hold of the executioner’s axe arm, she asked, “Bonnie? What are you doing here?”
“Ray had to go to the bathroom,” Bonnie explained, pulling off the hood. Underneath, she looked a little sweaty and disheveled, strands of hair sticking to her forehead. “I said I’d take over for a few minutes.”
“Bonnie, Damon’s here somewhere,” Elena said. “Have you seen Matt or Caroline?”
Bonnie sobered. “Caroline ought to be here,” she said. “Everyone’s been wondering where she is. The last time I saw Matt was in the Fun House. I’ll come with you.” She propped the plastic axe against the wall and led the way, Stefan and Elena hurrying after her.
The entrance to the Fun House was concealed behind a long black curtain. As Elena reached to twitch it aside, a hooded figure stepped out, black clothes swirling all around it. Elena jerked backward, her breath catching in her throat.
But the dark figure was too short to be Damon.